For People With Celiac...
seen quite a few posts, anybody heard of the supposed cure in the process?
Is AT1001 the Answer? (from Celiac Disease: Living Gluten Free)
Alessio Fasano, MD, was recently appointed director of the new Mucosal Biology Research Center at the University of Maryland, of which the university??s Center for Celiac Research (CFCR) is an integral part. Fasano, who also directs CFCR, reports that a multidisciplinary group of researchers at the two entities is collaborating to advance knowledge about autoimmunity within the context of celiac disease.
??Our team is convinced that celiac disease is the best disease model for studying basic autoimmunity because we have luxuries with celiac disease that we don??t have with other diseases,? Fasano says. ??We know some of the genes involved; we know tissue transglutaminase is the antigen that is the object of the autoimmune response [the protein the body mistakes as foreign]; we know the small intestine is the primary target organ; and most importantly, we know the environmental trigger that leads to the autoimmune process is gluten.?
Fasano explains that under normal circumstances, large molecules like gluten are prevented from entering the body by a formidable barrier that covers the entire intestine. The barrier is a single layer of cells, and the spaces between the cells are tight junctions, dynamic structures that can be conceptualized as gates that open and close.
But what is the key, and when does the key open the gate, and why?
A few years ago, Fasano??s team discovered the key??the protein zonulin, which regulates the opening and closing of the gates and controls gut permeability. ??Around the same time, we also determined that most of the autoimmune diseases are characterized by an extremely permeable intestinal wall and that individuals [with impaired immune function], particularly those with diabetes and celiac disease, have abnormally high zonulin levels,? Fasano explains. ??Our next task, of course, was to find a way to inhibit the zonulin.?
It didn??t take long for the Fasano team to find an inhibitor and to develop an animal model for testing. Using diabetes-prone rats, the researchers evaluated the effectiveness of the zonulin peptide inhibitor AT1001. The rats were randomized to two groups??one group that received the inhibitor in their drinking water on a daily basis and an untreated control group. Eighty percent of the untreated rats developed diabetes, compared with only 26 percent of the treated rats.
??We know these animals developed diabetes because they leak in their gut, and they leak in their gut because of out-of-control zonulin,? Fasano says. ??If you stop the leak by preventing the unusually high level of zonulin from interacting with its target receptor on intestinal cells, you will prevent diabetes.?
The plan now is to test the inhibitor in humans, Fasano states, specifically in individuals with celiac disease. ??You would take a pill that contains the inhibitor and 15 minutes later eat some pizza or a Big Mac. The gluten in the food would cause a huge amount of zonulin to be released, but by the time it reached the target, the target would be blocked, and the intestine would not leak. The gluten would remain in the intestine until completely digested and would not have access to the immune system.?
i see celiac all over now, even newspapers, random websites, the news, television shows, they keep finding out more and more on what it links too and it's insane....i think a cure will work though, cause look at how something simple just spirals out of control...the mystery about it seems to be gone though and they're learning more and more
AT-1001 will (in theory) help prevent/treat ALL autoimmune dieases, not just Celiac, which i find amazing
